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Heather Lake is right next door to Lake 22 and if you were to go up and over the ridge, a very steep ridge requiring the proper gear and expertise, you could potentially hike directly from one lake to the other. As the crow flies they probably are only about 1/2 mile apart. The lakes are very similar in the way they look. They’re both basically bowls surrounded by high ridges.
Assuming you’re like me and don’t have the proper gear and expertise to go directly from one lake to the other you’ll be taking the trails. Lake 22 is the more popular hike, probably simply due to the trailhead’s proximity to the main road and the fact that you spend more time hiking along the creek with views of a couple of different waterfalls along the way, but Heather Lake is just as rewarding and beautiful.
The Heather Lake trailhead is a mile or two up the road to Mt Pilchuck (NF-4220) off of the Mountain Loop Highway. For the past few years the road has slowly been degrading and was to the point where you really needed a high clearance vehicle to get to the trailhead but work is being done to refurbish the road and when I went this past week (May 18th, ’23) there were no potholes at all and you can get to the trailhead with most any vehicle.
As a side note the entire road to the Mt Pilchuck is being refurbished this year and so will be closed from the Heather Lake parking lot on up to Mt Pilchuck all summer.
My hike to Heather Lake clocked in at just over 4 miles and 1,225 of elevation gain which is about a mile shorter and a couple hundred feet of elevation gain than Lake 22. On this particular day I hiked Lake 22 first and then drove over and hiked Heather Lake. I met at least one other party doing the same thing. They had driven three hours to get there so figured they might as well make it a day.
It should be noted that both lakes can be completely hiked around but my mileage is just to the lake and back. Both lakes still have quite a bit of snow and although that doesn’t prohibit you from hiking around them it’s getting to the point in the year where the snow is a mushy mess and imho there’s not a lot of benefit in hiking around the lake. This changes in the summer because once it melts out there are nice rocks and whatnot around the lake where you can sit and eat lunch or just enjoy the sun.
Another interesting thing about Heather Lake at the moment is that there is no snow at all until just as you enter the bowl around the lake and then suddenly there are two or three feet of snow. The only thing I can figure is that the lake and surrounding cliffs create some sort of zone that holds in the cool temperatures.
